


Dilute

by Batwynn



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Creepy, Dreams vs. Reality, Horror, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Jötunn Loki, M/M, Psychological Horror, Shadows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 01:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3832774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batwynn/pseuds/Batwynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe Tony has a problem.</p><p>Loki does too, the way he's babbling and screaming and turning blue. </p><p>Yeah, there's definitely something wrong here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dilute

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse my 5AM writing.

Maybe Tony has a problem. Yeah, there’s definitely something wrong with him.

Because he’s standing here in front of a spitting-mad God, the alarms are blaring, someone’s banging on the door like  _that_  will help, and he’s practically naked. That sounds like a problem.

“—you think physical pain is all there is?” The god was snarling, arms pulled back behind him so far Tony could almost hear the muscles screaming. “I will tear you apart, memory by memory! Every moment you have found beautiful, every face you ever loved will be gone. You will be left with nothing but that rotten, old shell of a body!”

“What is going—”

“Oh, but pain. Pain…” The god continues madly, and Tony really  _is_  getting worried about his arms. It was weird, he just can’t look away from them.

“Pain is all relative—in the mind. I could take you apart with nothing but ice against your skin, until you are screaming for the loss of your limbs that you have never lost. Till you forget you ever had skin, till you’ve shattered over and over again.”

Tony opens his mouth to, once again, ask what was going on—because, well, he has no memory of walking down 70 floors to the holding cell of a pissed off Loki in the middle of the night—but Loki’s unstoppable. Like he  _can’t_  stop, even though his arms are bruising blue from the chains and his voice is growing rough from the screaming.

“—will be drained of blood in 12 seconds with the right amount of—”

“Loki…”

“—skinned from your head, one slice at a time, until you—”

“… Your arms,” Tony whispers.

“—nails peeled back and the flesh under them exposed to salts! I will—”

“They’re blue.”

Really blue, at this point, and the yelling outside the door is gone. Why hadn’t Tony noticed that? It’s been Loki’s voice, alone, for minutes now. Not even the alarm was screaming along with him.

_How long have I been down here?_

“Loki, you’re turning blue,” he repeats, and that wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to ask how he got here, or where everyone went, or why Loki was promising to kill him. What was up with that?

“I remember you,” the god says suddenly, voice cracked and weak.

“I don’t remember,” Tony replies, looking down at his boxer-clad legs and wondering where his shoes were. “I was sleeping, you know.”

“I remember you sleeping.”

Tony looks up to find red eyes squinting at him like he’s some sort of extinct animal on display. Maybe he was, Tony can’t remember.

Maybe he has a problem.

“You’re blue,” he points out for the third time. “I don’t remember this, but I sure as hell don’t remember you yelling at me like this before, either. What the hell is going on?”

Loki gives him a weird, considering look before something Tony said finally sinks in, and he looks down at himself.

The transformation is instantaneous. One second, Loki is almost sane—confused, but sane. The next, he’s back to pulling on his chains and threatening Tony with bodily harm.

Tony wishes Loki wasn’t so damn  _creative_.

And where are his shoes?

“JARVIS, can you tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m afraid I have no answers for you, sir,” JARVIS replies, and Tony’s thankful for him, considering his AI is the only normal thing in Tony’s world right now.

“— _swallow it whole and I shall watch as it eats your body from the inside out. I will watch and laugh! The pain. The pain is—_ ”

“Why does no one have an answer?” Tony asks no one in particular. He was starting to feel weird. It was hard to remember when he got down here, and he sure as hell couldn’t remember why he was down here.

“I remember you.”

Turning his focus from the wall just past Loki’s head, he finds the blue-skinned God studying him again. Something’s bleeding, now. Maybe Loki’s wrists. Maybe his mouth, too. Pink bubbles are popping at the sides of his mouth, making him look a little rabid.

That would explain a lot.

“Loki, what did you do?” He asks, because it’s probably the god’s fault. He remembers _that_ much.

“I… I—there was pain—I  _know_  you,” he mutters, sounding unsure. At least he wasn’t straining against the chains anymore. “I know you, you are Stark.”

“I sure as hell  _hope_  you know me, if you’re threatening me this much, there better be a hell of a good reason. Like I insulted your mother, or something.”

“My mother…”

“She wasn’t a hamster, by chance?”

Loki’s face contorts in a flash of pain, and the god’s on the floor before Tony can even think. He should have remembered.

She’s dead.

And now Loki’s wailing, and they should be as loud as his screams but they’re not. He’s crying like a child—Tony remembers how that feels all too well—and each hiccup, gasp for air, and sob is small. Weak.

 _This is really sad_ , Tony thinks, hating how detached fascination is all he can muster up. He feels like there should be more.

Something’s seriously wrong with him.

He thinks, that maybe, he has a problem.

And the door blows open.

* * *

 

They found him a blanket.

They’re also treating him like some battered child who needs a cup of chicken noodle soup and some good ol’ fashion lovin’. Well, it’s mostly Steve and Bruce doing that, and Natasha’s doing all the actual hard work while those two flock around him like hens.

“And you have no memory of coming down stairs?” She asks.

“Tony, drink this,” Bruce says, holding out—is that what he thinks it is? God damn tea.

“No and no.”

“Tony, drink it.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Tony accepts the cup with a glare and tries to disappear into his blanket without drinking it. Bruce hovers.

“Isn’t this my tower? Is there a robe shortage going on that I don’t know about?” Tony drawls, taking a sip of the tea before Bruce blows a gasket. “Mmh, that’s actually almost good.”

Bruce replies, “I’ll take that as a compliment,” and with a shrug, goes over to hover at the other end of the couch.

“Tony—”

“Yeah, yeah. Last thing I remember…” He begins, and actually thinks about.

Loki screaming.

No. No, before that.

Sleeping. Falling asleep in someone’s arms. So warm under those covers, but that body is always a little cold. Perfect for the summer, and not too bad in the winter if you have a good comforter. Which Tony does have, of course.

He’s getting off track, though, and some of these memories seem odd. Fuzzy. Misleading.

_Too good to be true._

“I think I was sleeping,” he offers, hiding his grimace behind another sip of tea. His tongue protests the heat, but the pain is grounding him more than anything else right now. After all, he’s still not sure if he’s dreaming or not.

Natasha looks up sharply from her tablet. “Sleeping?”

“Getting ready for bed, I guess. Falling asleep, whatever.”

“Did you and Loki have a fight before you went to bed?”

“A fight?” Tony questions, glancing around the room at the worried faces. Thor’s is the worse. He looks ready to break into two parts, angry or miserable.

Something’s so off about this, it’s annoying.

“Why would I fight with Loki? He’s down stairs.”

Someone’s breath hitches just enough that Tony knows that was the wrong answer. That Someone knows something he doesn’t.

What happened is starting to become more clear.

“Tony, i’m going to show you something and I want to to try to stay as calm as possible.”

“No promises,” he grouses, and keeps his tea up in front of his face like a shield. Tony’s having trouble keeping his expression in check, and if he’s about to face something possibly disturbing, there was no way he was going to be able to control his reaction like he usually does.

Natasha orders JARVIS to show him camera footage from his room. Normally, he’d find this hilarious—the team spying on him in his own tower after constant complaints about his cameras in every room. It’s not like he sits there and watches them sleep, that’s JARVIS’ job. If anything, they should have complained to the AI.

But, nothing’s funny about what’s on screen. Nothing at all.

“What is Loki doing in my bed—oh,” Tony gasps, and thank god he kept the tea in front of him. “Okay, that’s… Not what I expected.”

“This is normal,” Steve says from behind him, one hand still clenching the back of the couch by Tony’s head after an attempt at touching his shoulder and being shrugged off. “This is your relationship with Loki these days. Which is why, you have to understand, we have no idea what’s going on right now and how Loki ended up chained in the cell.”

“Well I sure as hell didn’t do it,” Tony grumbles, watching himself and the yelly-God snuggle into the blankets like it’s every day business and fucking hell, they’re even kissing. Groping. Tony recognizes the sound of his own giggling and happy moans and drops the tea cup into his lap.

The hens come fluttering around him again. Someone gives him a towel for his steaming lap, and Tony decides that’s enough proof that this isn’t a dream. He’s pretty sure he has 3rd degree burns on his junk.

“Friend Stark…” And there’s Thor now. “There is more to this video.”

Tony scowls at him like it’s his fault, because it’s easy and Thor’s a big boy, he can handle it. Sort of. Thor just kind of frowns at him and shuffles his feet like a kid caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. And speaking of unpleasant memories…

Tony shrugs them off and focus back on the screen, disappointed that he no longer has a cup to hide behind.

On screen, they’re no longer doing things Tony doesn’t want to think about. In fact, they seem to be snuggled up close in a way Tony’s never done before. At least, he doesn’t remember being the little spoon to anyone. Never mind  _Loki_.

“What am I supposed to be seeing here?”

Hen Steve clucks, “is this necessary? He should be getting some rest.”

Natasha gives him the desert of dry looks and nods at Tony to continue watching. It’s not like he feels like sleeping in that bed right now, anyway.

Tony stares at the screen for what feels like hours, because honestly, watching a room with no movement in it can mess with your sense of time. It messes with his sense of time so much he blinks and apparently misses The Moment because there’s absolute chaos on screen now.

“What? _What?_  Go back.”

JARVIS complies.

The seconds tick by on the corner of the screen, two people sleep, and then there’s a shadow standing next to the bed. It’s just  _right fucking there._

“Jesus Christ,” Tony breathes, pressing back into the couch to get away from it. Stupid reaction. Can’t stop it, anyway.

The shadow is humanoid, more or less, and it stands there for another couple of seconds before Loki’s jumping up and starting across the bed towards the thing. Tony winces as the god steps only centimeters away from his previously sleeping head.

And then the chaos starts.

Every few seconds, the video feed flickers and cuts out, but in between that there’s not much to see, anyway. Flashing lights, blobs of what Tony assumes is magic, his on-screen self is screaming something, and the worst part is that he’s screaming at nothing. The corner. There’s nothing  _in_  the corner.

“This is really not funny, guys.”

Someone says, “it’s not a joke, Tony,” and he doesn’t bother to check who it is.

The light show continues for another minute or so before it dies down and leaves the room empty but for himself and Loki. There’s not snuggling now. Now it’s just fucked up.

Loki’s crawling across the floor on all fours, looking crazier than usual. Tony’s still yelling at the corner, but he’s also doing something to his arms.

Tony looks down at them now, letting the blanket fall away to reveal long, rough gouges all the way down his forearms. They’re from someone’s nails. Probably his own.

Definitely his own.

How the hell did he not notice them until now?

“Shit…”

“That’s not all, but I don’t think you need to see the rest,” Natasha says, sounding way too calm for this shit.

Tony clears his throat, tucking his arms away before asking, “What happened to us after that?”

No one seems to want to answer that, so Tony continues to watch.

He regrets that choice when Loki starts changing shapes. It’s horrifying—really horrifying—and the second to the worst part is that the him on screen doesn’t even react. His back is to Loki, because blank corner seems to be fascinating, and Loki’s behind him turning into things Tony’s never seen before.

He wants to yell at himself to turn around, get his suit on, stop clawing at your damn arms.

JARVIS closes the screen when Tony leans over and throws up.

He can’t help but to think that maybe, just maybe, he has a problem.

* * *

 

Sleep was not supposed to be an option, but Mother Hen Bruce Banner is the god of good medications and forced upon him something to fix that problem. Tony doesn’t have the energy to argue, and that seems to worry the team even more.

He sleeps for a day. Apparently.

When he wakes up, his mouth tastes like bad memories and his arms fucking hurt. At least they’re bandaged up now, and someone has finally got him that robe he asked for. It’s the little things that make a horrible experience slightly bearable.

“Hey, when did you wake up?”

Tony stops spacing out long enough to find Bruce smiling down at him.

“No idea. Possibly hours ago. Could have been minutes.”

“Probably minutes, I just checked on you a half hour ago.”

“Great. So…”

Bruce pulls the heart monitor away from the bed and starts turning things off without answering. Tony wonders why he was hooked up to all that stuff to begin with, until he remembers that he—apparently—went insane last night and lost a large chunk of his memories.

“Where’s Loki?” He asks, startled when Bruce gives him a bright smile. “What? Don’t be creepy, I’ve had enough creepy for a lifetime.”

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “It’s nice to hear you asking about him, after last night. He’s a mess, right now.”

Tony makes a face and leans back into his pillows, considering Bruce’s wording. “So we’re really in some kind of relationship?”

“Yeah, going on two years now.”

“And he’s still down in the cell?”

“We… Couldn’t let him out,” Bruce replies, not meeting Tony’s eyes.

“And why is that? Is he still yelling?”

“He’s… There’s ice everywhere and Thor said something about it burning the skin, so no one’s gone in.” He pauses, picking up a pile of clothes from the bedside table and placing them on the bed. “Natasha also made it clear that we’re under some kind of quarantine.”

Tony snorts, picking up the shirt and pulling it over his head. He was glad, at least, for something as normal as a band t-shirt. He needs normal right now.

“Fat lot of good that’s going to do,” Tony remarks, and chuckles at Bruce’s obviously-agreeing-smile. “So what’s the deal then? Tower’s locked down? Test running till the cows come home? Don’t we need cows for that?”

“I don’t think we want to introduce cows into this incitement. Besides, I think Thor might hunt one and eat it. He’s been complaining about our lack of fresh meat every time it’s my night to cook.”

“Nah, you’re thinking Clint. Clint will hunt a cow down and kill it.”

Bruce rolls his eyes and—ah, yes—there’s a needle and all those fun things that Tony hates.

“Don’t give me that look, you saw that video,” Bruce chides gently. “We’re not taking any chances, especially since you’re still missing your memories.”

“Yeah, about that. They’re more fuzzy, than missing. You know? Like, I  _know_  Loki’s personality, even when I came back to reality down in the cells. I knew what he was like beyond what my memory is trying to tell me.”

Bruce places the needle back down and picks up a tablet to begin his note taking. Great, shrink time.

“What is your memory trying to tell you?”

“That the last time I saw Loki, he was disappearing in the middle of the park with Thor.”

Bruce looks up from the screen and squints at him. “That’s… a large gap.”

“How large a gap?”

“Three years.”

Tony stares at him, confident enough in his people-reading skills to know the man isn’t lying. And doesn’t that suck.

“So you’re saying Loki is gone for a year, comes back, and suddenly strikes up a thing with me the second he’s back on Earth?”

“More or less,” Bruce shrugs.

“You’re kidding me!” Tony yelps, putting hand to his chest in mock-horror. “I’m not  _that_  easy.”

“You guys got along pretty much right off the bat,” Bruce tells him, looking back down at the tablet and adding a note. “We didn’t know you two were sleeping together until next July, though.”

“And how’d that go? I imagine Captain—”

“Banner,” comes a disembodied voice. “Get down here, now.”

Bruce looks up at the speaker automatically. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s changed with Loki.”

Tony’s off the bed and out the door before Bruce even stands up.

* * *

 

They weren’t wrong about the ice, it’s pretty weird and really cold. Tony’s fingers turn blue the second he reaches out—accidentally—and places a hand on it.

Everyone’s also convinced that he shouldn’t be here. That  _who knows what that was last night?_  And of course, the all time favorite: you need sleep.

Tony’s not convinced of anything of the above, and walks into the ice caves that were once their holding cells.

“Loki?” He calls out, choosing to ignore the weird chill crawling up his arms. Bandages did little for the cold.

Something flickers at the edge of Tony’s vision. It’s not Loki.

He doesn’t let himself look at it.

“Loki?”

“Tony, come back,” Steve calls from somewhere behind him. It sounds like he’s miles away, though, and Tony ignores him too. He has a small feeling that wasn’t actually Steve. A medium sized feeling.

_And why hasn’t anyone come after me?_

From much closer, another voice whispers, “Stark?”

Sweet, unreasonable relief washes over him, and he picks up the pace. It’s getting harder to move without touching the ice, too many tall stalagmites of crystal reaching up towards the ceiling. It’s dangerously beautiful.

“Loki, we need to talk,” he calls out, because he has no idea what else say. Loki’s the focal point of this whole thing, he just knows it. But Loki’s also somewhere safe, like home.

Yeah,  _home._

“You said you remembered me sleeping, which I kind of remember, too,” he continues, brushing past a sharp jut of ice. He can feel the cold seeping through his band shirt, and he regrets choosing normal over warm. “I don’t usually go with my gut feeling over facts and good old numbers, but I think we can fix this if you’d stop hiding.

 _Flicker_.

Not Loki.

 _Don’t look_.

The thing he’s not looking at moves around to his other side in the space of a breath. It’s just there.

Tony feels the urge to scream, but he doesn’t. He won’t. He’s afraid that if he starts it’ll be just like that video. He’ll break and there’s no corners in here for him to scream at, anyway. Just ice and Loki and the shadow.

Something moves right in front of him, and his world goes blue before the screaming starts.

* * *

 

  
_Dreaming when you go to sleep._

_  
Witching hour and counting sheep._

_Promises you cannot keep._

_Promises you cannot keep._

_When you are gone, I shall weep._

Tony’s not sure what’s real anymore, so he doesn’t bother pinching himself. Everything’s too bright around him, except a blob next to him and the corner.

“Stark,” croaks a voice, worryingly weak.

“Loki?”

“Mmh,” he grunts in recognition.

Tony squints at the face hovering to his right and it  _is_  Loki, just Loki in techno color. Or, well, a dusty blue with red colored eyes.

His first thought is:  _pretty_.

His second is about ice cream, but he’s not sharing that.

“What’s going on?” He asks instead, pushing himself up on his elbows. Loki hisses something at him and puts a hand on his chest to hold him still.

The corner is—no, he’s not looking at that.

“Do not move,” Loki whispers, shifting very little, himself.

It’s only then that Tony realizes that Loki’s half draped over him, his body between Tony and the corner. His eyes are wide, something unusual for Loki’s features.

Wait. He  _knows_  that.

“I remember you,” Tony rasps, tempted to reach out and touch the face he’d grown to love. His fingers twitch.

The corner makes a noise.

“I remember you,” Loki responds, his voice still barely a whisper. “I am glad you found me, again.”

Tony asks, “I don’t suppose you have any idea what’s going on?” and not, ‘what the fuck  _is_  that thing?’ Because he has the most horrible feeling that if he acknowledges it, something bad will happen.

“We are being pulled apart.”

“Details would be helpful,” Tony hisses, the hairs under his bandages pricking up from both cold and fear. The shadow was growing bigger.

“The only reason we know one another at this point is because we have managed to patch ourselves up with shared memories,” Loki speaks slowly. Tony notices the way his eyes twitch, and realizes that the god is fighting to avoid looking, too.

“So the reason we forgot each other is because we got separated?”

“At some point last night, yes.”

“And this is only going to get worse?”

Loki smiles ruefully and curls his fingers into Tony’s shirt ever so slowly.

“We need to fight,” he whispers.

“Kind of hard if we can’t move.”

“We need to fight, and we need to do so in mere seconds.”

“How do we even fight something like—"he chokes on his words when the shadow shifts. It’s behind Loki now. Right behind him. Tony’s eyes almost lift from Loki’s gaze, but the nails digging into his chest force him to focus.

"Anthony…”

Tony licks his lips. He doesn’t bother to be slow about it. It’s looking straight at him, anyway.

“Yeah?”

“You are the brightest soul I have ever met.”

“Uh, thank you,” Tony replies awkwardly, not sure what to say to that. “You too?”

Loki’s lips twitch in silent laughter, and he does a really good job of not flinching when his hair starts to move.

It’s breathing on him.

And for some stupid reason, that pisses Tony right the fuck off.

“I’ll have a better reply for that once we deal with this,” he growls, staring into Loki’s eyes, hard. “On three?”

“Yes.”

He can’t help it, he grins.

“One…”

Loki’s fingers uncurl from his chest, energy building in the palm of his hand. It’s warm, and a little scary.

“Two…”

One of the things Tony grabbed on his rushed trip down here was a certain set of bracelets. He activates them with the tap of a finger.

“Three!”

All it takes is flash of magic, and everything becomes chaos.

* * *

 

**Natasha Romanoff**

Report: B

_Tony Stark walked directly into the hall way leading to the holding cells, in the basement of Stark Tower on Tuesday, February 23, 2013. Everyone on the team made some attempt to stop him, but something assisted him in slipping from anyone’s grasp and he was quickly lost sight of in the shadows. All attempts made to follow were thwarted by an unseen presence. Banner eventually gave way to the Hulk, and managed to break his way through the ice and several walls._

_We followed on foot, all armed. Unknown presence was not seen, but both Stark and Loki made contact soon after Hulk made it through to the main holding cell block. Stark was speaking to Loki at the time, saying something disgustingly mushy along the lines of—read: ‘I love you'—and Loki was responding in kind._

_Both were heavily wounded in several areas, Stark’s wounds found primarily on his back and Loki’s around his arms and chest area. Loki accounts for Stark’s injuries coming from the short period between Stark’s entrance to the area and their attack._

_According to him, the unknown being lingered behind Stark for some time before moving away. Loki claims that was when he noticed the cuts on Stark’s back, first._

_Stark attested for Loki’s wounds by telling us to watch the security footage and that the god fought bravely against what he calls: The Shadow._

_Security footage not found. JARVIS has provided recordings of the events leading up to Loki’s ice take-over and our arrival to the scene. We have no solid evidence of what happened between those times. We have no proof that said being, The Shadow, has been defeated._

_Both accounts, from Loki and Stark, have minor discrepancies. Banner has reported that both men have suffered some memory loss, and that much of the event itself will be skewed over time._

_I would personally like to offer some observations, and suggest further monitoring._

_Stark’s body, when we arrived on scene, was heavily wounded as I stated before. I noted his bracelet as soon as we made contact, and yet his suit had not been called._

_Loki, who Stark claimed to have fought with The Shadow, showed several signs of magic deprivation, (see case file: White Wizard) but had somehow managed to return to his Aesir form before our arrival. (see Thor’s account for further information)_

_While both claimed to have fought for a long period of time, the actual time between Stark’s entrance to the holding cells and our arrival was 12 minutes. When told this information, both men immediately retracted their previous estimate and smiled at us._

_I cannot say for sure, but there was something off about them. Since the event, both men have kept to themselves and have derailed from their usual behavior enough to warrant suspicion._

_I highly recommend video and audio surveillance with limited contact with the subjects. All Avengers have been warned, most comply. Banner refuses to listen to my suggestions, and continues usual amounts of contact. So far, nothing has tipped him off, but I can’t rely on Banner to give full disclosure. He will protect Stark blindly, even with evidence of irradiated behavior._

_I will continue with minimal surveillance, under pretense of a concerned team mate.  
As much as I regret suspecting one of my team, sir, there’s something wrong with Tony Stark._


End file.
